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Khitan or Kitan ( in large script or in small, Khitai;[2]Chinese: 契丹語, Qìdānyǔ), also known as Liao, is an extinct language once spoken in Northeast Asia by the Khitan people (4th to 13th century CE). It was the official language of the Liao Empire (907–1125) and the Qara Khitai (1124–1218). Owing to a narrow corpus of known words and a partially undeciphered script, the language has yet to be completely reconstructed.[3]
Classification
Khitan appears to have been related to the Mongolic languages;[4]Juha Janhunen states: "Today, however, the conception is gaining support that Khitan was a language in some respects radically different from the historically known Mongolic languages. If this view proves to be correct, Khitan is, indeed, best classified as a Para-Mongolic language."[1]
Prior to the 19th century, only one Khitan text, the Langjun inscription, was known to scholarship in China; however, the inscription was thought by Ming and Qing scholars to be written in the Jurchen script.[3]
The Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty erroneously identified the Khitan people and their language with the Solons, leading him to use the Solon language to "correct" Chinese character transcriptions of Khitan names in the History of Liao in his Imperial Liao-Jin-Yuan Three Histories National Language Explanation (欽定遼金元三史國語解) project.
The Liao dynasty referred to the Khitan language with the term Guoyu (國語, "National language"), which was also used by other non-Han Chinese dynasties in China to refer to their languages like Manchu of the Qing, Classical Mongolian during the Yuan dynasty, Jurchen during the Jin, and Xianbei during the Northern Wei. Even today, Mandarin is referred to in Taiwan as Guoyu.
Vocabulary
There are several closed systems of Khitan lexical items for which systematic information is available.[3] The following is a list of words in these closed systems that are similar to Mongolic. Mongolian and Daur equivalents are given after the English translation:
^ abcKane, Daniel B. (2009). The Kitan language and script. Handbook of oriental studies/Handbuch der Orientalistik, section eight, central Asia. Leiden Boston: Brill. pp. Prefix-1. ISBN978-90-04-16829-9.
^Herbert Franke, John King Fairbank, Denis Crispin Twitchett, Roderick MacFarquhar, Denis Twitchett, Albert Feuerwerker. The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 3: Sui and T'ang China, 589–906. Part 1, p.364
Franke, H. (1976). "Two Chinese–Khitan Macaronic Poems". In Heissig, W.; Krueger, J. R.; Oinas, F. J.; Schütz, E. (eds.). Tractata Altaica: Denis Sinor, Sexagenario Optime de Rebus Altaicis Merito Dedicata. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 175–180. ISBN3-447-01798-8.
Kane, Daniel (1989). The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. ISBN0-933070-23-3.
Qinge'ertai (Chinggeltei); Yu, Baolin; Chen, Naixiong; Liu, Fengzhu; Xin, Fuli (1985). Qìdān xiǎozì yánjiū [A Study of the Khitan Small Script] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. OCLC16717597.
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